Doing it ourselves

I26

We've already been compromised and co-opted…[b]ut out of that…I think movements will continue to grow. Underground movements, grassroots movements...there was a woman I spoke to a few weeks ago, she's from San Francisco, where a huge grassroots midwifery movement took place in the ‘70s and ‘80s and...she said, ‘what do you do when women just start catching each other's babies and no one has titles, and no one has credentials, and no one has equipment, but yet that's what women want, and babies are well, and women are well, what if we just caught each other's babies?’ What would that look like? What message would that give?

A grey future

I15

I think that the future looks grey. I'm not optimistic that the future holds a better world, I don't even like to use that language, that the future is going to be better. I think that as time goes on I imagine that I will become better at explaining my politics then at seeing how I want to resist the world as it is but I don't see in the foreseeable future the world changing in the way that would allow for people to have meaningful lives that are without violence...

Moving on

I21

I think that your generation is starting ahead of where my generation started and that brings me some hope. Now I think there are a bunch of things that I think you guys are doing that is totally as stupid as we did but there are things that I think you are thinking about, and concerned about, and critical about, and open about that was not reflected in the left wing movements of the sixties and seventies….there were many things we couldn't have known. But I think this generation of activists has a body of knowledge based on the trajectory of things that have happened in the last thirty, forty years that you are actually more humble about.

Dystopia, narcissism, and control mythologies

I5

Dystopia is a control mythology, that's what it is, and it is the mark of a society that is completely narcissistic that imagines that its own ending is equivalent to the ending of the world... Will we face resource shortage? Unquestionably. Will there be difficult choices to be made? Absolutely. Will there be fascism? Yes, almost certainly. Do we maybe need some of that crisis in order to actually generate movement forward? Unfortunately, probably yes.

Radical community, radical memory

I6

[In the alter-globalization movement] lots of people were thinking about how things could be done very differently and a lot of people were trying to create groups and activist institutions that were not based on the idea of building a new structure of society and the imagination and going out and trying to propagandize it to the world, but actually trying to build that future in the present. So there was this real focus on consensus-based decision making, a big focus on being the change – that was a big phrase, still is I suppose – a big focus on creating...radical communities within the structures that exist today. But also I think it was a bit of a surprise, everyone was very surprised when all of these groups came together and you saw these labour groups marching beside environmental groups….Everyone, for reasons that were completely ahistorical, is really surprised by the emergence of things like the black bloc or...the Ya Bastas from Southern Europe. There was...this moment where everyone was like, 'oh! Where did all of this come from?'

Putting people and revolution in front

I22

I don't believe in models...but there are examples and when one stands up and fights for principle, when one puts a revolutionary interest, when one puts the interests of the people in the forefront you can accomplish...tremendous...things. What Cuba is about is not a question of whether Cuba is better or worse than any other country, the question is that Cubans are asserting their right of self-determination and sovereignty to solve their own problems themselves. The same thing with the Venezuelans, the Bolivians, what's going in Ecuador, what's going on in a number of other countries. So they are an example that when you struggle, you can achieve certain things - that it's not futile to struggle, and that one can put the interests, revolutionary interests and the interests of the people in the forefront.

Revolution and Indigenous struggles

I11

I've found stories of Indigenous resistance in Canada pretty inspiring and I'd like to know more about that history actually and be more in touch with it. As far as when people say that there's not going to be a revolution in Canada and that Canada is one of the most stable countries in the world I think that's not true in a lot of communities and I wouldn't say that's true with Indigenous people.

Organizing alternatives

I9

I've [retreated] from being so action focused because I didn't see the sum of all the actions I was doing actually building anything that was creating any fighting potential to actually challenge the social conditions around me. I just felt like it was going nowhere. The cafe was different. With the cafe we were putting together a project [which] we hoped would be an example of something that was organized differently on different principles. So we were organizing on this principle called participatory economics and we were organizing as a workers’ cooperative so, as we saw it, this cafe bookstore venue was...how we were organizing a very political space that was living by example and the hope was we could encourage other people to organize like that.

Pulling up oppression by the roots

I29

...removing patriarchy and sexism...would create such a ripple effect that there would be so much more potential. I think that a lot of what goes on that is negative can be traced to those roots.

Everyday winning

I21

You know what [winning] looks like for me? [It] looks like my life. My life if my kids were around me…[I’ve] got a place to live, little garden, a guaranteed annual income because I'm on a pension now, time to engage in conversation, time to be with friends and family, time to go for a walk on the beach, time to listen to some music. I think my life is so privileged except for what capitalism has done to take my sons away from me, which is an economic and social phenomenon. What capitalism has done is to make me lonely.